Adoption Patterns of Information and Communication Technologies by enterprises in developing countries (Case study Palestine

This paper employs the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to explore the main factors shaping the adoption of Information and Communication Technologies by enterprises in Palestine. The study relied on the responses of owners and managers of thousands of enterprises of diverse sizes and economic activities, selected carefully to represent a true sample of the Palestinian business sector. The study has deduced the correlation between the various Information and Communication Technologies and their adoption attitudes by these enterprises. It has been observed that the enterprise size, reflected in the number of people employed by the enterprise, is a crucial aspect in the technology adoption patterns. This indicates that enterprise size influences the way how enterprises perceive technologies in terms of their degree of usefulness or ease of use. The study revealed that over 80% of who do not use ICT reported that the main reason is the lack of need compared to 6% justified that on the basis of expenses, and 7% expressed their technical inability to employ these technologies. The results of the analysis indicated that the majority of enterprises employ ICT to replace existing (or traditional) processes, rather than as transformational agent which requires high degree of innovation. Therefore, these technologies are not seen by managers and owners to enhance the competitiveness of the enterprise in the market, but rather as the enterprise acting as a customer for other companies, especially international companies from where they can buy products and services. 2 The degree of ease of use, or usability of the technology was also found central in determining the penetration level of ICT among Palestinian enterprises. The percentage of enterprises endorsing a specific technology is highly correlated to the ease of use of this technology. Simple technology like mobile and landline telephony were endorsed by 87.5%, respectively 54.6% of all enterprise, while sophisticated technologies like computer networks, E-commerce, and Virtual Private Network were endorsed respectively by 5.8%, 0.5%, and 0.36%.